soft insanity
by mewling
Summary: [drabble, ONE SHOT] Four cameos of Sasuke's life with Orochimaru. Kabuto's jealous, Orochimaru's creepy, and Sasuke's detatched.


series**naruto**  
title**soft·insanity**  
rated**T**  
warnings**violence·angst**  
by**mewling**

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**-**

**soft insanity**

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I. Week 16

Sasuke's body burns like fire from somewhere in his abdomen. He is blindfolded, battered and weak. His right leg is broken, snapped at the tibia, and there are numerous stinging pains puncturing his left flank. Disorientated, his body scrapes the side of a tree, skin acutely aware of the notches on the trunk. Sasuke can barely sense his enemies flitting about in the surrounding greenery.

Five are corpses, decorating the branches and forest floor. Two are still at large.

The knee on Sasuke's good leg buckles, and he ploughs face first into dirt, leaf littler and low-lying plants. The numbness spreading from the back of his brain tells him he's going to pass out soon. Heavy footsteps crunch beside his head, and cloth rustles as someone crouches beside him.

Rough fingers shove themselves under his blindfold, and tug it down. Kabuto's face is unimpressed, and the curl to his lip decidedly contemptuous. Beyond him, Sasuke can see the two bodies of his remaining enemies, throats leaking into the dirt. Blood drips from Kabuto's fingers onto Sasuke's face.

Before he passes out, Sasuke closes his eyes. The noise on the back of his eyelids almost looks like Itachi's face.

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II. Week 39

This hideout probably bores Sasuke the most. Piles of books and scrolls -Orochimaru's precious jutsu's- crammed into shelves and boxes with no particular organisation. A long, high ceilinged room with no windows, made from grey stone, and a cool fifty meters below ground.

Sometimes Orochimaru comes in, sits on the table in front of him to chat and leer for a while. He tries to be nice (or at least accommodating), which irritates Sasuke almost as much as it disgusts him. He doesn't say anything; a content Orochimaru leaves sooner.

It occurs to him, one day as he leafs disinterestedly through a medic journal after Orochimaru has slithered off, that Orochimaru is probably trying to act…fatherly. He suppresses the thought, and uses it later to help vomit up the revolting dinner he's served.

Orochimaru even smiles (somehow, no matter whose body he's in, Orochimaru's smiles are always creepy) at him when they prepare to leave to the next location. Sasuke ignores this, as he does the venomous look Kabuto shoots him.

Sasuke scans the skies before they leave, half-expecting something Orange and Yellow and Blue to come jumping out of nowhere, screaming at him. Nothing ever does (it's boring), and Sasuke feels something twinge in his stomach.

It's probably hunger.

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III. Week 62

Something touches Sasuke's face as he sleeps. He jerks into wakefulness, lunging forward blindly with the kunai he sleeps with clutched in he palm. Sakura's body spins away from him, spiralling dark fluid. Her corpse slides wetly down the wall.

Five seconds later, Sasuke wakes up for real, panting heavily, white curtain fluttering across his face, in the summer draft. Checking the room with paranoidly swift eyes, and finding nothing, he relaxes his death grip on the (perfectly clean) kunai.

The window opens out onto the ocean. The outer wall drops down a sheer cliff, which is one hundred meters in height and ends in a pile of jagged rocks that waves thrash argumentatively against. Sasuke ghosts the perimeter unnoticed (or ignored) by the sentries, walking perpendicular to the wall.

He stops to sit on the edge of the cliff, right beside the facility. A guard notices, and wanders up to him, no doubt to offer assistance. The man's hair is dark and long, tied back in a ponytail, his face lined and his eyes naturally red.

The cliff is where Orochimaru will find him in the morning, swinging his legs off the side watching the sun rise. Neither will mention the butchered corpse of Orochimaru's guard that surrounds him.

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IV. Week 95

A tube runs from Sasuke's arm to a bag of yellow liquid. He can see it, by straining his eyes to their rightmost limit. He knows, more than he feels or sees, that there are many other tubes, bags and needles surrounding him. The strap that stretches uncomfortably across his throat prevents him from moving. He is pinned, drugged, dripped and monitored.

Sasuke's heartbeat is a steady, electronic rhythm issuing repetitively from a nearby monitor. The light shines painfully onto his face. He bites back a groan. His mouth and nasal cavity tingle statically with blood.

Kabuto is close. The constant _tappa-tappa tap_ of his fingers across the keyboard is testament to that, as is the stench of cigarette smoke that registers in Sasuke's brain. Kabuto says he smokes because he can, and it can't harm him.

The sound of a scraping chair grates on Sasuke's eardrums, as do Kabuto's footsteps as he moves to stand beside him. Kabuto's head is angled so his glasses reflect the light, and Sasuke can't see his eyes. Kabuto's voice rolls out with volumes of grey smoke, saying something Sasuke can't quite understand because there's a sharp pain in his upper arm and he's falling.

It sounded like "Don't forget your only the vessel".

But the last thing Sasuke hears is the sound of his heartbeat like the vibration of footsteps through someone's body into his. He dreams, and in his dreams he rests on someone's back and presses his face into their long black hair.

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A/N: Mewling is trying to make herself a livejournal account. It's all  
very confusing.

(N/B: Paranoidly isn't a word)

This story's good parts owe alot to Divine Office by spinadrift.  
Anyway, please ask if you are uncertain about anything.

Mewling isn't very satisfied with this. The idea was for it to be shorter, so  
this is repetitive and slow moving. Please give mewling reviews and  
constructive criticism.


End file.
